The Relationship between Qazi Saeed Qomi’s Apophatic Theology and the Concept of Oneness amongst Mu’tazila, Shi’ites and Mystics

Denying any resemblances between the creator and creatures, Qazi Saeed Qomi sets his ideas apart from the typical cataphatic theology in Islamic discourse as well as the conventional theology of Shi’ism. This paper aims at investigating the relationship or lack of it between Qazi Saeed Qomi’s apophatic theology and the conventional predominant monotheistic perspectives of main schools of theology (i.e., Ash’arism, Mu’tazila, Shi’ism). Qazi Saeed’s theology is very different from the common rational theology of Ash’arites or Shi’ites, both of which emphasize the congruities between the creator and creatures. Although differentiating the aforementioned ideas appears to be difficult, unlike other theologists, Qazi Saeed does not believe in the theory of substituting the essence for attribute. In spite of the fact that at the first sights, Qazi Qomi’s theology brings a resemblance to rational-narrative-apophatic theological thoughts (e.g., al-Shaykh al-Saduq’s narrative-apophatic theology), our argument is that his ideas are reliant on the theoretical mystical thought (although they are still different in some ways). Qazi Qomi’s theology has been influenced by the theoretical mystical thought in terms of the following issues: believing in personal unity of existence, negating congruities between the essence and its manifestations, negating God’s essence from his attributes and believing in confinement of God’s names and attributes. The most considerable difference between them is that mystic theologists believe in being qua being principle, while Qazi Saeed Qomi fails even to accept this principle.